I closed it thirty-two years too late.

Chapter 2 — The Black Sheep

My name is Noelle Kestrel, and I grew up in one of those prominent families that smile warmly on the covers of local society magazines while quietly tearing one another apart behind closed doors.

My father, Warren, was a senior managing partner at a prestigious corporate law firm.

My mother, Colleen, spent decades floating between charitable foundations, gala dinners, and private country clubs.

And my younger sister, Marissa, had always been the golden child — beautiful, outgoing, compliant, precisely the daughter my parents loved to parade before their social peers.